“Sure do. I have spies.”
“Spies?”
He snorts. “Friends, Mal. Employees. Clients. Small towns are small towns. People love dredging it up. Hell, I could care less, but if you’re waiting for him, don’t. He sits in there for hours. He won’t be out any time soon.”
“Do you ever go inside?”
“Nope.”
“Just sit out here.”
“When I have time.” The words are barely out, though, when his manner shifts. It is so subtle that the tilt of his spine, the lift of his chin, or the focus of his eyes might have been missed by someone who didn’t know him. When it comes to body language, though, I’m still attuned to Jack’s.
Looking over my shoulder, I see Amelia Ackerman from Boise, Idaho, a.k.a. Lily, who looks exactly like Jack’s mother, emerging from the pergola between the still-closed deli and the beach shop. She is with a man I’ve seen before, and this time, I remember where. He’s the same one I saw here yesterday, the one wearing baggy shorts and a loose tee, the one who may or may not have been taking pictures of me but who is definitely walking beside Lily. Just to be sure I’m not mistaken, I pull my camera around and, sliding up beside Jack, scroll back to yesterday’s shots.
Zooming in on the one I want, I offer him the camera. “Who is he?”
Shading the screen with a hand, he leans close. My instinct is to lean away, not because I don’t like his nearness, but because I do. He smells of soap, which he has obviously used after operating on the cat. Sure, there’s the bloody shirt. But that’s Jack. His hair is shortenough to be messed and still look good. His face is tanned and scruff-chic, skin moist in the heat.
“More to the point,” he murmurs, “who is she.” It isn’t a question. He knows.
I do pull back now. “Who is she?”
Chewing on the corner of his mouth, he considers that. Then he nods, seeming to accept that he has to say it aloud. “My mother’s brother’s granddaughter. Amazing thing, genetics.”
“Wow,” I breathe, studying the girl in this new light. The blonde hair is in a ponytail, the long legs in athletic shorts, the height putting her eye-to-eye with the man. They’ve started down the sidewalk toward Sunny Side Up, so I figure she’s on her way to work. “Why is she here? I mean, I know what she’s doing while she’s here, but whyhere?”
He returns his elbows to his knees. “She says she’s tracing her family tree. She thought it would be fun to explore this branch.”
“You don’t believe her.”
“Not for a minute. Fun? There’s been too much hard feeling. Something bad happened back then. Why else would there be zero communication? Fast forward to this spring. Anne advertises for summer help in the local paper, and Amelia answers. It sounds innocent enough, but one look at her wearing my mother’s face, and you know it was not.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe she doesn’t feel her grandfather’s animosity.”
“And her mother doesn’t share it?” he asks. “Fat chance of that. I always liked Kim, but after my mother disappeared, she wouldn’t talk with me either.”
“Lily looks eighteen.”
“Try twenty-two. She just graduated from Boise State with a degree in journalism. So what’s she doing working as a waitress?”
He has a point. But there is a plausible counterpoint. “Breathing?” I offer. “Taking time to decide what she wants to do? It’s not uncommon. I have friends whose kids take gap years after high school or college just to lie low until they decide what comes next.”
“Maybe she knows what comes next, which is write a book about what happened to her family.” He says it like I should know what he’s talking about. Only I don’t.
“What happened to her family?”
“Financial ruin,” he says but without satisfaction. Whatever resentment he holds toward Elizabeth’s mother’s family for not cooperating with him in his search, is apparently separate from this. “Her grandfather—my mother’s brother—invested everything he had in a deer farm in upstate New York. He imported a breed of deer that supposedly produced better meat. Venison was in demand in Europe, and he didn’t see why it shouldn’t be in demand here.”
“It wasn’t?”
Jack shrugs. “Don’t know if the problem was on the marketing end or the breeding end, but it never took off. When he finally folded, he was up to his ears in debt. Home, farm, equipment—everything sold at auction for a fraction of what it was worth.”
“How awful.”
“You’d think.”
“You don’t?” I ask in surprise.
